


Scars in Cyrillic

by Jemini93



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes's Trigger Words, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Genius Shuri (Marvel), Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Panic Attacks, Recovery, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29811258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jemini93/pseuds/Jemini93
Summary: Bucky Barnes learns what he always knew. The road to recovery isn't always smooth or linear. There will be good days and bad days. The difference now is that he has people to walk it with him again. Including a teen genius of a princess.CW: depiction of a panic attack and references to the big bad Hydra and their treatment of the Winter Soldier.
Kudos: 4





	Scars in Cyrillic

**Author's Note:**

> Just a cute little idea that's been bouncing round my head for a while. Hope you like! Let me know if you do :). With thanks to google translate for help with the Russian used.

Experiencing an early spring morning in Wakanda, Africa's hidden jewel, was an extraordinary pleasure. The heat of the day was still waxing and a pleasant breeze that managed to be both warm and fresh meandered its way through the air of the capital Birnin Zana, a metropolis that, unlike many of it's western cousins seemed hardly at odds with the surrounding verdant hills. From the earthy tones and unobtrusive shape of it's still impressive architecture to the vibrant traditional markets, heady with spices and colour to the use of technology that rendered its carbon footprint next to zero, the city was the perfect blend of past and future. Parity of wealth and a culture that took pride in community meant the city was peaceful in reality as well as appearance. Many Wakandans thought that the Golden City was the closest Earth had yet achieved to true utopia and Bucky Barnes, who perhaps could be considered a reliable judge considering he was considerably better travelled than the majority of that justly proud people, was inclined to agree. 

He sat alone on the glass and steel balcony that protruded from the open plan apartment he was currently staying in, full of a stylish mixture of polished dark wood, tapestries and glass that blended together organically. The only sounds were the muted hubbub of the city and the creak of wicker as he shifted in his seat to reach for his coffee. Relaxation was a new sensation to him. Only two short months ago his deprogramming was not yet complete and he had been both apprehensive of being alone with his thoughts and slightly skittish or withdrawn around others. Only a while before that had he allowed anyone near him unarmed. This made no sense. After all, the Asset had never asserted itself upon his mind spontaneously. Indeed, it would have been rather dangerous for the handlers that had moulded him if it had. What use is a rifle that fires before the sniper pulls the trigger?

Trauma responses don't tend to care for such practicalities, however, and so his stipulation had been adhered to. Even Steve had agreed to have the new shield that Shuri had fashioned for him in the room, despite how much the idea of arming himself against Bucky had clearly galled him. 

Now he was free. Thanks to a combination of advanced neuroscience, meditation techniques and exposure therapy that neither he nor Steve had fully been able to grasp, the mental triggers that Hydra had planted so deep in his psyche had been dismantled. Zola himself could scream the ten words down a megaphone into his face and he would only blink. 

//

"It's ok Buck. It's worked. You'll see." Steve squeezed his shoulder before moving to the other side of the room as agreed.

Steve seemed so sure as always but what, Bucky wondered, was the point of the test then? He would not fully relax, nor commit to relief, until it was over. He looked around at the stark walls, so different from anything else in Wakanda, to distract himself. He could feel the familiar dread rising up his chest. Steve was conferring with the two others in the room, members of the team of experts that had been working on his very particular case. The taller of the two, Themba, stepped forward. "Are you ready, Bucky?" he asked in the soothing baritone that suited both his role as a psychiatrist and an amateur actor. 

"As I'll ever be" Bucky gave him a tight smile which grew still tighter when Themba looked down at his tablet. He fought the urge to scratch at the irritation of the wires plastered to his temples. Shuri would be monitoring his cerebral activity from outside the room.

"желание" came the rich voice. 

"Ржавый" Themba spoke a few moments later.

"Семнадцать"

"Рассвет " 

"Печь" The seemingly innocuous Russian words that had dominated the last seven decades of his life were no more welcome to Bucky's ears but the familiar static fog had failed to descend across his mind. 

"Девять" 

"Доброкачественный" Themba's dark eyes flickered up from the screen he was reading from momentarily.

"Возвращение на родину" Hope and anxiety made a heady mix in Bucky's psyche.

"Один" One word left and still his head was clear.

"Грузовой" 

As agreed, after a few moments Themba's usually strong yet gentle voice barked out an order. "Attention soldier! Fold your arm!"

"You need to speak Russian, Themba. That's what they used." Bucky had insisted on the conditions Hydra had used be replicated as close as possible, hence the grey concrete on the walls and the angular steel table littered with weaponry to one side of the room. 

"солдат, внимание! Поверни на право!" a command to turn right which Bucky felt no compulsion to follow. A few more fairly neutral commands produced the same result.

"Солдат, вы должны задержать человека слева от меня. Держите его руки за спиной и используйте это, чтобы связать их.". An order to tie Steve's hands behind his back with the proffered cable tie. Again the old orders that he had once followed with a razor focus held no sway. Still Bucky was nervous. beads of sweat pooled in the lines of his palm. The final test. He exchanged glances with Steve who appeared to have no such qualms, only determination in his clear blue eyes. 'How is he so damn sure all the time?" Bucky asked himself. 

Themba crossed the room and placed a rifle into Bucky's slack hand. He gripped the familiar weapon with which he was so proficient and waited for Themba's final instruction. 

"Солдат, я хочу, чтобы ты выстрелил мужчине слева от меня в голову." An order to kill. 

"Steve..."

"C'mon, Buck. You got this." his friend told him firmly. 

'And if I don't Shuri's got a force field trained on him.' Bucky remembered. He raised the gun. Themba repeated the order.

Nothing. 

No fog, no compulsion, no fear.

Bucky dropped the rifle with a sharp clatter. 

"No. No, I won't. It's gone." he looked up into Steve's face that had broken into a broad smile. "Steve...it's over" he managed to choke out. Shuri burst jubilantly into the room, reading measurements and parameters off her tablet that Bucky could not possibly compute. He stood there, numb with relief, the room swimming around him until Steve had him gripped in a firm hug and he closed his eyes. It was over.

"Shame Sam couldn't be here." Steve remarked eventually.

Bucky snorted "to be fair, that would have been a slightly better test of my restraint.". 

Shuri gave his arm a gentle punch. "You boys love each other really!" she said before accepting Bucky's offered hug.

//

'Thinking of Shuri' thought Bucky 'I'd better actually get dressed.'. The apartment was kept fit for company but he certainly wasn't right now, sleep tousled and half clad as he was. Shuri wouldn't mind. The irreverent young princess of Wakanda would probably find it highly amusing but he wanted to seem at least somewhat put together. 

'Starting with this hair' he decided once he was standing before the bathroom's wide, circular mirror, looking at the dark mess on his head. Picking the brush up in his right (and currently only) hand, flipping it and catching it deftly in the same place he took it to his head. It slid between the first strands without incident. Then he hit a snag. With a small grunt of annoyance he pulled harder. Still the strands refused to part. He rigorously dragged it backwards and forwards through his hair. A small jolt of pain ran down his temple, the prickle of a static shock raised every hair on his face. 

Unbidden, the memory of cold metal around his face and head bloomed across his mind like blood in water. Stronger spasms of electricity that sent synaptic fire through his head, burning away all he was. Every scrap.

"Oh no, no, no. Not again. Not today" Bucky tried to fight the wellspring of panic down. This hadn't happened for months.

The cold vice around his head, tightening, the hideous moment of anticipation. The equally cold people around him, uncaring about his impending agony. They wouldn't even register his screams.

'No one's here!' he told himself.

Alone. No one there to remind him who he was. No friend left to save him. Any glimmer of an identity burned away like shrinking fragments of a letter in a bonfire. Again and again. Pain, mission, cold. Pain, mission cold. Pain...

He pressed his slightly trembling fist to his forehead. What were the grounding techniques Themba had taught him again?

Years. Years of it. What if the test wasn't enough? What if someone found the machine and used it on him? Would that undo Shuri's work? What if it was still inside him somewhere, all the more dangerous for the depth of the hiding place? 

The base of his spine was pressed against the smooth tiles. His stomach rose and fell in the middle of his curled body. "Stop it!" he rasped out between rapid breaths that flared his nostrils 'please' he didn't quite get out 'I thought it was over'. 

///

Shuri of Wakanda's royal house did not look much like either a princess or a scientist. Nor, as her brother sometimes had cause to tell her, did she behave much like one. The teenager who burst into Bucky Barnes's temporary apartment that morning, chopsticks through two messy buns at the back of her head, several loose T-Shirts flowing around her frame and jaws working around a wad of gum cut a very chipper figure more reminiscent of a performing arts student. 

"Hey Wolf!" she called part of Bucky's new nickname among her people while she set her case full of equipment down on the oval table. 

The only response was a muffled clatter from behind the bathroom door. Instinctively she crossed over to the door and pushed it open, only wondering briefly whether her intrusion into the soldier's bathroom would be welcome one.

In a foetal curl on the other side of the door ,his back to the sea green tiles, sat Bucky. His mind was clearly elsewhere, breathing rapidly, his body swaying slightly in time to the rhythm. Sweat that had nothing to do with the growing heat of the day shone on his forehead, trapping a few lank strands of brown hair next to his skin.

Pushing aside her dismay, Shuri knelt on the floor in front of him. Wordlessly, she took his remaining hand in hers and took in a lungful of air, held it for one, two, three, four, five seconds and released it in a measured, yet fluid puff that formed the numbers as she counted. Gradually, Bucky returned the gentle grip and his breathing settled into a quiet harmony with hers. 

"Where are we?" she asked quietly.

"Bathroom" Barnes managed. 

"Where is this bathroom?"

"Wa-Wakanda. The Golden City." he responded.

"What colours can you see on the walls?"

"Greens, blues, bit of gold."

"That's right. What is your name?"

"Bucky Barnes" he recited.

"What are we going to do now Bucky?" she asked, handing him the autonomy. 

"Get up off this damn floor." he grunted as he rolled to his knees, then clambered awkwardly to his feet, almost looking his chronological age for just a moment. He brushed his still tangled hair away from his face, and left the room, crossing the apartment's lounge area to sink into the cushions of the couch. 

Shuri settled next to him "so...do you want to talk about what happened?" she asked neutrally. 

Bucky huffed out a short, weak laugh "yeah I...was brushing my hair of all things."

"Ah so it wasn't the thought of me showing my rocket launcher idea for your new arm?" she asked nonchalantly.

"You considering that?"

"Go big or go home Wolf."

"Right? No...it was...I got a static shock from the brush, on my head and it...reminded me of things."

Comprehension dawned on Shuri's face and she nodded with a kind of sympathetic yet matter of fact understanding. The attitude of the young princess instantly made him feel better, like the episode had been a logical response. He had been tortured using electric shocks to his head so, naturally an electric shock to the head could be expected to be a trigger. Despite all he had been through at the hands of people who called themselves men of science, Bucky found himself drawn to the ethical and benevolent counterparts he had known since. Science made the world make sense and brought truth into focus. There was a time when he thought he may have pursued his youthful interest in it into further study and a career but when he had left school neither he nor his family had had the funds for it to be a consideration. 

"Are you still up to looking at my designs?" asked Shuri "Or just brunch?" During his recovery, Shuri had taken to bringing him to a very trendy café near her lab. To Bucky, who's home country didn't even have a royal family, the idea of a princess casually grabbing coffee had seemed almost absurd but it wasn't something that had seemed particularly noteworthy to either the employees or patrons of the establishment. 

"Sure. Just let me get ready, ok?"

"Sure." The teenager adopted the position that seemed to be a quintessential feature of her generation, slightly slouched, arms bent to hold a device of some sort in front of her face, thumbs tapping erratically on its surface.  
Shuri had allowed him twenty minutes before turning to see whether he showed any signs of emerging and musing on the myth that of the sexes, women took longer to get ready for any occasion. It wasn't true in her family or that of anyone she associated with. Bucky did indeed reappear, fully dress now but his hair looking no better for the brush once again gripped in his hand. He looked at her sheepishly, communicating the wall he had run into. His desire to avoid a repeat performance of his earlier flashback. "Shall I?" she asked instinctively.

"You wouldn't mind?"

"Not a bit. Come sit." she stood behind the couch, accepting the proffered brush and got to work.

Having his hair brushed by a princess like a beaten up ragdoll was pretty odd, even by the standards of Bucky's life "hey no braids, ok?" he instructed.

"Not even a little one? How about two that meet up in the middle?"

"No." he told her flatly.

"Spoilsport! I was hoping to show our good Captain some photographic evidence when he gets back." She pouted dramatically, working her way around his scalp with feigned disappointment before spoiling the effect entirely by asking whether she was pulling too hard on one particularly large knot.

"Nah, 'sall good." he smiled. 

"So, are you still enjoying the city?" she asked after a beat, clearly hoping his admiration of the place hadn't dimmed with familiarity.

He considered his response. He didn't exactly need to lie to tell her that he in fact did very much but there was something very alluring about the rural areas of Wakanda. "It's great, really." 

"But?" she prompted.

"I've been thinking about going a bit...further afield. I don't know. A change of scene might just help shake the last of the stuff in my head."

"Don't go too far, Bucky. Steve won't like it and neither will I."

Bucky broke into a wide grin. "Don't worry I'm not taking off. Just somewhere in the country for a little while. I feel like I could do with going off grid a bit. In a nature sorta way not a hiding from people who wanna kill me way."

"Sounds good." Shuri repositioned the parting in Bucky's hair. 

"It does, doesn't it?" he mused.

Shuri finished her last brushstroke. "You're all done. Let's go." she said brightly.

"Are you gonna order a proper coffee this time rather than one of those frappawhatsit things?"

"Don't talk your age, Wolfie." she groused "and it is real coffee. It contains two shots of espresso, ergo, real coffee!"

"It has sprinkles!"

"Which is a bad thing, why?"

Even after Shuri had picked up her case and lead the way out of the front door, their good natured bickering and laughter continued into the corridor beyond. The light moment was a balm to Bucky. The day had been reclaimed.


End file.
